This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7xc2xa7 119 and/or 365 to IT SV2001A00017 filed in Italy on May 28, 2001; the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging apparatus.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In document U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,717 B1 a medical examination system, particularly a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus is disclosed showing the above described architecture. The apparatus has a host computer unit, a control computer unit and an image computer unit. The three computer units are integrated in a commercially obtainable personal computer that contains at least two of the said computers, preferably all three of the said computers. The integrated hardware architecture is further operated also by a commercially available operating system such as Windows(copyright) or other kinds of operating systems. Part of the hardware and specifically, the units for driving the apparatuses specific exciting and receiving units as well as the analog to digital and digital to analog converters for transforming the digital control signals in analog signals for controlling the driving units and for transforming the analog received data in digital data, are housed within the frame of the nuclear magnetic resonance apparatuses, while the conventional personal computer hardware is housed in a separated case or console. Thus U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,717 B1 teaches to separate the said personal computer hardware from the nuclear magnetic resonance excitation and receipt unit.
Although the use of commercial hardware in the form of personal computer already contributes to lower costs of the apparatuses, a considerable amount of hardware is reproduced in each machine. The computational power of each such personal computer hardware is not completely exploited by carrying out the control and processing functions of only one machine.
Furthermore, a particular kind of medical examining apparatuses, particularly of magnetic resonance imaging apparatuses, is getting more and more interesting for the user, due to its lower costs, to the reduced dimensions and to the more simple way to install it. Such apparatuses are the so called xe2x80x9cDedicated MRIxe2x80x9d apparatuses which have magnetic structures which are relatively small and which are constructed for examination of only special anatomical districts of the entire body, such as the foot, the knee, the elbow, the head, the shoulder, the hand, etc.
Thus in a bigger medical cabinet or in a diagnostic department many of these specific apparatuses may be provided each one having its own hardware.
It is important in this case to reduce so far as possible costs and volume of the apparatuses.
It is an object of the present invention to provide for a medical examining apparatus, particularly for a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, which construction helps in reducing the overall dimensions of the apparatus or the need of installation space for the apparatus and in reducing costs.
Furthermore it is another object of the present invention to provide a medical examination apparatus, particularly a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, having an hardware architecture which facilitates the configuration and upgrade of the apparatus by limiting as far as possible the amount of hardware which needs to be substituted for configuration and upgrade.
The invention achieves the above mentioned aims by means of a nuclear resonance imaging apparatus, in which at least one part of the personal computer hardware is formed by a client and a server computer communicating one with the other by means of a conventional network protocols.
Many different configurations of the client-server architecture are possible which has different levels of advantage.
In one possible configuration, the client computer is mainly formed by a motherboard comprising a local CPU and only a network interface such as a conventional network card or network controller and the local client computer, this means the client computer associated to the exciting and receiving units of the magnetic resonance imaging apparatuses, only manages the communication with the server computer in which one all the hardware units and software reside which are necessary for controlling the driving units of the exciting and receiving units located in the machine frame of the exciting and receiving units themselves, for processing the received data obtaining from them the image data, for displaying, filing, storing the said image data, and for receiving and processing the commands inputted by the machine operators and also for managing the network communication.
Since network protocols allow a wide sharing of peripherals directly connected with the client and or the server computer, some of the peripherals may be connected directly only to the client computer or to the hardware computer.
Other peripherals may be connected or interfaced directly with both computers depending on the level of hardware doubling requested by the operators for facilitating their job.
In any case, transferring most of the controlling and processing tasks to a server computer reduces the hardware needed for configuring the client computer which must in this case carry out local minor or limited tasks.
For example, the display monitor or input devices must be provided for the client computer and for the server computer. This hardware doubling might be also chosen for other peripherals such as mass storage devices and/or portable data devices writer or readers such as floppy disk drives, CD-rom or CD-writable or rewritable, DVD-ROM or DVD writable or rewritable drives or other kind of storage device readers and writers such as compact flash, PCMCIA memory stick readers and writers, or the like.
The client computer may have also a hard disk unit or other kind of memory unit for storing the communication protocols and control software and the operating system as well as the software for carrying out limited local tasks.
It is to be appreciated that the client computer in any case needs a reduced computational power, limited hard disk or memory for the local software and a reduced RAM as the server computer. Thus also if many of the peripherals are provided in the configuration of the client local computer as well as in the configuration of the server computer costs of the client computer will be considerably lower than the costs of the server computer.
It is also to be considered that in case of use of only one apparatus, the client computer might be very simply configured as the server computer so that no client computer will be necessary since more than one apparatuses are provided are provided.
In case of use of two or more apparatuses, the client server architecture however allows to reduce costs for hardware, and software because the second apparatus will need only to be equipped with the client computer, while it will be put in communication with the server computer of the first apparatus.
Thus a second, a third and further apparatuses may be added very simply to the network by simply providing the server computer with a switch or a hub having the requested number of ports which are needed.
Each one of the apparatuses connected to the server may be differently configured relating to their client computer and the different peripherals of the different client computer configurations may be or not shared by each or part of the apparatuses connected to the network.
Relating to the above mentioned possibility it is to be noticed that the above described client/server architecture may be in any case also used in any kind of medical examination device. So also examination devices of different kind such as ultrasound, radiographic or similar apparatuses may be connected to the network, thereby sparing resources also for this kind of apparatuses. In this case the server computer must be provided also with the controlling, processing and displaying programs for each different kind of apparatus connected to the network.
It is always possible to decide how far controlling, processing and displaying or storing tasks of the apparatuses connected to the network has to be integrated in the server computer.
Furthermore the client/server architecture allows differentiation of different diagnostic divisions by defining the common server of the apparatuses of one division as local server and by connecting this server to a further network controlled by a central server or framework computer which then collects information from the different local servers. This allows better cooperation of the different diagnostic divisions relating to identifying and collecting information of a patient and also easier upgrades of the apparatuses of the different divisions which may be carried out centrally, for example when a software upgrade or other similar jobs have to be carried out.
It is also to be stressed out that the client computer needing a reduced hardware amount will show also smaller dimensions and that it might be integrated very simply in the frame or case supporting the exciting and receiving units or in devices associated therewith such as in the frame of an examination table or chair, or the like.
Also the apparatus dedicated monitor and/or input device and/or storing device might be provided in a very small console which might be associated very easily to the frame of the exciting and receiving unit or to the examination chair or table.
The above architecture allow simply to use the same host computer combined with the specific programs to control more than one imaging apparatus.
The client computer associated to the apparatuses resident exciting and receiving units as well as to the apparatuses resident specific hardware units for driving the said exciting and receiving unit may be configured in different manners so to provide integration with more peripherals which might be chosen to be added to the MRI apparatus, such as a video cards for driving a local monitor and/or interfaces for driving mass storage devices as floppy disk drives, CD-ROM or CD writable or rewritable drives or the like.
The host computer might be configured as a server having a switch or hub for connecting more than only one apparatus and might be provided with the image reconstruction software, with the software for controlling the driver units of signal excitation and receiving units according to different kinds of imaging methods known.
The host computer might be itself a regional server which is a client of a central server of a server controlling a network formed by more than one regional server each one controlling one or more than one MRI apparatuses.
The above mentioned architecture also allows to use the same regional server to control different kinds of imaging apparatuses having also a client computer as local control unit, such as for example X-ray imaging apparatuses, ultrasound imaging apparatuses etc.
According to a further improvement of the hardware architecture of the present invention, there is provided a communication bus which is a backbone of the driving unit or units of the excitation and receiving unit or units and of the associated local computer and each driving unit and each unit of the client computer is made in the form of one or more electronic cards each one having an input/output interface with the communication bus, while the input data and output data exchanged between the single electronic cards is coded according to a common data coding protocols.
By providing each unit and/or each electronic card forming a unit with its communication interface for the specific communication bus in use, the single units of the apparatus may be added or removed very easily.
Therefore, the apparatuses may be configured in a very easy and inexpensive manner, not only relative to the components of the client computer and to its interface with the driving units of the exciting and receiving units but also relative to each of the said driving units which has to be specifically designed and constructed for the specific exciting and receiving units. Thus thanks to the above mentioned architecture it is possible to remove, add and substitute electronic cards for upgrading, integrating or repair purposes. It is also possible to define a basic hardware configuration which is required for the proper operation of the apparatus relating to its basic functions by leaving open the possibility to upgrade the configuration of the apparatus at any time when needed with additional units or cards for executing further functions.
It is also possible to simply upgrade older dedicated hardware, such as the magnetic coils feeding units and/or the driving units of the receiving coils and/or further hardware needed for driving temperature probes or further control and survey functions by simply removing the older electronic cards and substituting them with the newer ones.
Such open architecture of the specific hardware for driving the exciting and receiving units and the client computer hardware has further advantages since it gives a better possibility to carry out diagnostic hardware tests through the server computer or by means of diagnostic systems which may be interfaced with the communication bus for collecting and analyzing the hardware. The diagnostic procedures allows unequivocal addressing of each electronic card, since the communication bus requests for each card connected therewith have a precise and univocally recognizable address.
In more detail, in their basic configuration the driving units of the exciting and receiving units may include, a central image data supervision, pre-processing and reconstruction unit, which controls a control and capture unit as well as a thermal and magnetic control unit, and a receiver unit.
All these sub-units of the driving unit are provided with communication devices and are connected to one other and to the client computer and its peripherals and through the said client computer to the server computer and its peripherals by using the same bus or the same communication lines.
As a further improvement, the use of a console consisting of a client computer and a server computer formed by a conventional personal computer with appropriate functions, allows the use of peripheral devices for command entry, display, print, storage and communication with conventional networks, such as keyboards, monitors, modems, or network adapters, printers, etc.
Furthermore, it is also advantageously possible to adapt currently enhanced video-game peripherals to diagnostic use, the apparatus, or at least some functions thereof being easily controllable, for instance by a joystick or a game pad, which allows to enter commands in a more immediate and intuitive manner.
The architecture of the hardware according to the invention allows easy implementation of the different operating modes of an imaging apparatus of whichever kind by simply loading the corresponding software in the server computer and/or in the client computer. The different modes within the same kind of apparatus often do not require the physical presence of dedicated electronics, the latter being replaced by control software packages. When a different examination apparatus has to be considered, then it is necessary to provide only a very limited part of the entire hardware that has to be replaced with the specific hardware designed for driving the specific examination and receiving units. Hence, for instance, a unique server console can be used both for control and image display through different apparatuses, by simply loading the software required for the specific apparatus. Moreover, any improvement, e.g. for MRI machines, the implementation of new or different imaging sequences, may be simply obtained by loading the corresponding software into the server computer memory and, if needed, by replacing and/or adding cards or parts of the electronics or sub-units of the unit for driving the signal exciting and receiving unit. The server computer will then be operated in order to communicate the new sequences to be applied in one or more or all the apparatuses connected to the server computer by means of their client computer.
The considerable advantages in terms of flexibility, easy maintenance and upgrade, cost savings and fast construction, which may be achieved by the arrangements of the present invention are apparent from the above description.